An eligible employee’s promotion claim cannot be rejected for the employer’s failure to obtain vigilance clearance or maintain APRs.

The petitioners were serving in the respondent Corporation and had been ordered to hold the post of General Manager on a stop-gap basis with charge allowance. They subsequently superannuated on 31 March 2012 and 31 May 2012, respectively.

In an earlier petition, SWP No. 2095/2012, the High Court directed the respondents to convene a Departmental Promotion Committee (DPC) and consider the petitioners’ cases for substantive promotion as General Managers from the date their right to promotion had accrued.

Upon non-compliance, the petitioners initiated contempt proceedings. During their pendency, the Establishment-cum-Finance Committee, in its meeting dated 8 September 2016, rejected their claims on the grounds that they had never been posted as General Managers, vigilance clearances were unavailable, an APR of petitioner No. 1 was missing, and the post was a selection post.

Whether the petitioners’ superannuation extinguished their right to be considered for substantive promotion, despite the earlier judgment directing consideration of their cases.

Whether the Establishment-cum-Finance Committee validly rejected the petitioners’ claims on the ground that they had never been posted as General Managers, when the respondents admitted that they had held the higher post on a stop-gap basis.

Whether non-availability of vigilance clearance and APRs, matters within the employer’s control, could justify denial of consideration for promotion.

Whether an eligible employee could be denied consideration merely because the post of General Manager was a selection post rather than an automatic promotion post.

Whether the Committee’s decision was legally sustainable when it had not examined the petitioners’ vigilance reports and service records before rejecting their claims.

Once a right to consideration for substantive promotion has accrued, it is not extinguished by the employee’s subsequent superannuation; the earlier direction to convene a DPC and consider the cases had attained finality and could not be re-agitated.

Although an employee has no automatic right to promotion to a selection post merely by virtue of seniority, an eligible employee has a right to fair and lawful consideration for promotion on the basis of merit assessed from the service record and vigilance reports.

The employer bears the duty to obtain vigilance clearance and maintain APRs, and an employee cannot be penalised for the employer’s failure to do so.

The respondents could not rely on the petitioners’ retirement to defeat their claims because the earlier judgment had conclusively directed consideration of their promotion cases, and that judgment had attained finality.

The Committee’s finding that the petitioners had never been posted as General Managers was inconsistent with the respondents’ own admission that they had held the higher posts on a stop-gap basis against charge allowance.

Similarly, the absence of vigilance clearances and APRs could not be attributed to the petitioners, since obtaining and maintaining those records was the employer’s responsibility.

Although the post was a selection post, the petitioners were entitled to consideration on merit; however, the Committee had not examined their vigilance reports or APRs and had merely rejected their claims without undertaking the prescribed evaluative exercise.

The decision was therefore arbitrary, contrary to the earlier judicial direction, and legally unsustainable.

It directed the respondents to undertake fresh consideration of the petitioners’ cases for promotion to the post of General Manager on the basis of their service records, and to complete the exercise within two months from the date of receipt of the judgment.